Bob Spooner

Bob Spooner, an important educationist and lifelong socialist, has died in Leeds aged 81. He believed in the comprehensive ideal and fought to improve education for the working class.

His first headship was in Doncaster, but in 1967 he moved to Leeds to become the head of the city's first comprehensive, Foxwood school, in the middle of one of the largest public housing schemes in Europe. He made the school, where he taught for 20 years, an enormous success. He abolished uniforms and corporal punishment, introduced mixed-ability teaching groups, and discussed all major policy changes with the staff, sometimes over his legendary glasses of sherry. He was a tough headteacher; he had to be. He took risks by appointing radical teachers and he created a genuinely innovative environment. It was a model school.

He wrote about his time at Foxwood in Lay Stone on Stone (1988), and semi-fictional accounts of his life as headteacher in his Spode trilogy -Pages from Spode's Diary (1992), More from Spode (1992) and Spode's Last Word (1994). In his words, they were "designed to ridicule all the major aspects of government policy that have been enacted since 1988". The jokey, light tone is underpinned by a serious and learned approach to running a school.

His last major book State Education - What's Left? (1995) was a serious attempt to influence the Labour party's educational agenda. It was completely ignored by New Labour. However, it provided an important guide for those opposed to New Labour's pro-privatisation approach.

Bob was born in Birmingham and studied English and history at Birmingham University. He spent many years in the 1960s as head of a sixth form in Walsall, while he pursued a career in local politics in neighbouring West Bromwich. He became chair of the education committee and leader of the Labour group.

He was unwavering in his commitment to socialist values and his opposition to New Labour. In 2000, Bob himself was expelled from the Labour party for nominating a Left Alliance candidate to stand for Leeds City Council.

In his retirement, he was able to give more time to his love of Yorkshire cricket and his passion for literature.